Louis Daguerre

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787 – 1851) was the French inventor of the daguerreotype process of photography. He was also artist and chemist. Daguerre was born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France, in 1787. He learned architecture and panoramic painting. He was adept at his skill for theatrical illusion and became a celebrated designer for the theater; later he invented the Diorama, which opened in Paris in July 1822.

Louis Daguerre joined in partnership with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who developed the world's first permanent photograph (known as a Heliograph). The main reason for the partnership had to do with the already famous dioramas of Daguerre. Since Niepce was a printer and his process was based on a faster way to produce printing plates, Daguerre thought that the process developed by his partner could help speed up his diorama creation.

After years of research, Louis Daguerre announced the Daguerreotype on January 6, 1939. The French Academy of Sciences announcing the process on January 7 of that year. Daguerre's patent was acquired by the French Government, and, on August 19, 1839, the French Government announced the invention was a gift "Free to the World."The work on the Daguerre process was taking place at the same time as that of William Fox Talbot in England on the calotype process. Both men knew that they were working on a process that would revolutionize the art world. The Grand Tours which were so popular were illustrated by drawings of scenes and the "photographic" process would improve the quality and ease with which these popular holiday memories could be produced.

To protect his own invention, Daguerre himself registered the patent for Britain on August 12 (a week before France declared it "Free to the World"), and this greatly slowed the development of photography in that nation. Great Britain was to be the only place the patent was enforced. Antoine Claudet was one of the few people legally able to take daguerreotypes there.Daguerre did not need to make money from the invention to live, since he had been pensioned by the French government. Fox Talbot spent a considerable amount of money on his process (est. £5,000 in 1830s money) and licensed the process to British photographers where it was used instead of the Daguerreotype.